Cover not available
Part of
Conspiracy Theory Discourses
Edited by Massimiliano Demata, Virginia Zorzi and Angela Zottola
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 98] 2022
► pp. 319–342

Chapter 14
Expressing stance towards COVID-19 conspiracy theories in Macedonian online forum discussions

| AUE-FON University
| Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje
This chapter examines how stancetaking strategies aid advocacy and refutation of prevalent COVID-19 related conspiracy theories on two Macedonian internet discussion fora. The socio-political background and the content of detected conspiracy theories debated in the forum threads are briefly discussed. The authors explore affective, epistemic and interpersonal positioning in posts by three groups of social actors: conspiracy theory proponents, conspiracy theory opponents and a group of undecided. Through quantitative and qualitative analysis of selected discussion sequences the chapter draws attention to dominant patterns of stancetaking in conspiracy theory argumentation.
Keywords: stancetaking, internet discussion fora, conspiracy theories, COVID-19
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Related work
  • 3.Socio-cultural background
  • 4.Data and research procedure
  • 5.Stance dimensions analysis
    • 5.1Affect
      • 5.1.1Results
      • 5.1.2Discussion
    • 5.2Investment
      • 5.2.1Results
      • 5.2.2Discussion
    • 5.3Alignment
      • 5.3.1Results
      • 5.3.2Discussion
  • 6.Summary and conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 1 December 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.98.14mit
References
Arendholz, Jenny
2013 (In)Appropriate Online Behavior. A Pragmatic Analysis of Message Board Relations. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Aupers, Stef
2020 “Decoding Mass Media/Encoding Conspiracy Theory.” In Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories, ed. by Michael Butter and Peter Knight, 469–482. Oxford and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barton, David, and Carmen Lee
2013 Language Online. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baym, Nancy K.
1996 “Agreements and Disagreements in a Computer-Mediated Discussion.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 29 (4): 315–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, Douglas, and Edward Finegan
1989 “Styles of Stance in English: Lexical and Grammatical Marking of Evidentiality and Affect.” Text 9 (1): 93–124.Google Scholar
Bieber, Florian, Tena Prelec, Dejan Jović, and Zoran Nechev
2020 The Suspicious Virus: Conspiracies and COVID-19 in the Balkans. Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group – BiEPAG.Google Scholar
Blanuša, Nebojša
2020 “Conspiracy Theories in and about the Balkans.” In Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories, ed. by Michael Butter and Peter Knight, 596–609. Oxford and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Breeze, Ruth
2020 “Angry Tweets: A Corpus-Assisted Study of Anger in Populist Political Discourse.” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 8 (1): 118–145. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson
1987 Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Crystal, David
2001 Language and the Internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Du Bois, John W., and Elise Kärkkäinen
2012 “Taking a Stance on Emotion: Affect, Sequence, and Intersubjectivity in Dialogic Interaction.” Text and Talk 32 (4): 433–451. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Du Bois, John W.
2007 “The Stance Triangle.” In Stance Taking in Discourse: Subjectivity, Evaluation, Interaction, ed. by Robert Englebretson, 139–182. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ehrhardt, Claus
2014 “Politeness and Face Work in German Forum Communication.” In Face Work and Social Media, ed. by Kristina Bedijs, Gudrun Held, and Christiane Maaß, 84–107. Münster: Lit-Verlag.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving
1967 “On Face-Work: An Analysis of Ritual Elements in Social Interaction.” In Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior, ed. by Erving Goffman, 213–231. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.Google Scholar
Hoffmann, Christian, and Wolfram Bublitz
(eds.) 2017 Pragmatics of Social Media. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jaffe, Alexandra
(ed.) 2009 Stance: Sociolinguistic Perspectives. Oxford Scholarship Online. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kiesling, Scott F., Umashanthi Pavalanathan, Jim Fitzpatrick, Xiaochuang Han, and Jacob Eisenstein
2018 “Interactional Stancetaking in Online Fora.” Computational Linguistics 44 (4): 683–718. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Locher, Miriam A.
(ed.) 2010 “Special issue: Politeness and Impoliteness in Computer-Mediated Communication.” Journal of Politeness Research 6 (1): 1–5. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Locher, Miriam A., Brook Bolander, and Nicol Höhn
2015 “Introducing Relational Work in Facebook and Discussion Boards.” Pragmatics 25 (1): 1–21.Google Scholar
Luzón, María José
2013 “ ‘This is an Erroneous Argument’: Conflict in Academic Blog Discussions.” Discourse, Context and Media 2 (2): 111–119. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marcoccia, Michel
2004 “On-line Polylogues: Conversation Structure and Participation Framework in Internet Newsgroups.” Journal of Pragmatics 36 (1): 115–145. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Martin, James R. and Peter R. R. White
2005 The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Myers, Greg
2010 The Discourse of Blogs and Wikis. London: Continuum.Google Scholar